Still reading Beginning of a Hero, by Charles E. Yallowitz, this week. Our hero, one Luke Callindor, is not having much luck yet dealing with the Lich, but has assembled an actual D&D party at this point, consisting of Luke, the “forest tracker”, which appears to correspond to a D&D Ranger; Nimby, the halfling thief; Fritz Warrenberg, the gnome illusionist from, apparently, Germany; and Aedyn the half-elven cleric. They are also being assisted by a “drite”, which seems to amount to a faerie dragon, right down to its use of a confusion-inducing breath weapon. (There is a very slight possibility that I still have most of the old Monster Manual memorized.)

“It isn’t like we’re helpless. I mean, we are a genius illusionist, a master thief, a drite, a priest of the sun, and a forest tracker.”

There, a little refresher, just in case you had lost track of who’s in the party and who’s out. Now all the party needs is another fighter and a real magic-user. No offense to all you illusionists out there of course — I used to have an illusionist character myself, after all. (Shocker!) Still, you can’t fight evil if you don’t have someone to cast Magic Missile. Just ask these guys.

And now, here is this week’s teaser from The War of the Ravels!

Cynidece, however, merely shrugged. “So it was magic. Sounds like a curse to me. And, although everything you said about Dondoleh is correct, at least according to the historical record, none of it means that Untelleh is not the one who let Daras-Drûm into the world to begin with.”

“True, it does not,” Brennendah said. “But whatever Untelleh did or did not cause to happen, the Rittandics as a whole do not share culpability. Do you blame all the Acarians for abandoning the Pelts to be smothered in the Downs by the death-wind, while they retreated across the river?”